Don t Be Afraid of the Dark. Kevin Shively Head of Marketing

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Lucy Murphy
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1 Don t Be Afraid of the Dark Kevin Shively Head of Marketing

2 Agenda 1. Defining dark social: Does this have anything to do with wizards? 2. Dark social s growing importance: how can I quit being scared of the dark? 3. Measuring dark social: How can you measure something you can t see? 4. Predictions for the future: What will happen next?

3 What in The World is Dark Social? Media Strategies Summit

4 What in The World is Dark Social (Really)? SM s Technical Definition: Website traffic that originates from a shared link, but does not pass a referrer and thus appears as direct traffic in web analytics (Referrer = the page URL containing the link to the site that we clicked i.e. www. facebook.com/simplymeasured) SM s Tell me like I m five Definition: Social shares and traffic that can t be measured by traditional website or social analytics. SM s Tell me like I m a Teenager Definition: All that other social stuff in our giant direct traffic bucket. Social Media Strategies Summit

5 How Does This Happen in Practice? Social Mobile Apps: In many cases, Facebook, Pinterest and mobile apps for other social networks do NOT pass a referrer FB has 823 million mobileonly users Messaging Apps: WhatsApp, Kik, FB Messenger and other mobile messaging apps do NOT pass a referrer WhatsApp has 1 billion users Major providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook do NOT pass a referrer Gmail has 1 billion users SMS: Text messaging does not pass a referrer 300M+ mobile subscribers in the US Social Media Strategies Summit

6 Public vs. Private Sharing Dark social is so prominent (in part) because people don t want to share everything publically but instead are sharing privately with their closes friends and family via peer-to-peer channels Some Examples: A wife might share his desired holiday gift with her husband via SMS A friend might his friends about vacation destination for a potential upcoming trip A colleague might her colleagues a new product announcement with her team Social Media Strategies Summit

Other Direct Traffic Secure browsing: If you are browsing a site using HTTPS site encryption and click on a link that is not encrypted (HTTP), no referrer is passed Paid and Organic Search: In some

7 Other Direct Traffic Secure browsing: If you are browsing a site using HTTPS site encryption and click on a link that is not encrypted (HTTP), no referrer is passed Paid and Organic Search: In some browser/device configurations, google won t pass a referrer when a user clicks a link from an organic or paid search ( not provided ) Mobile apps: Links in mobile apps almost never pass a referrer Documents: Links in documents like PDF, word docs, etc. also do not pass a referrer Social Media Strategies Summit

8 Ok I Get it, Why Do I Care Again? You Own Dark Social! It s time to start taking credit Start illustrating the bigger impact your social team really has Paint a bigger picture of the web traffic, engagement and conversions you are driving Social Media Strategies Summit

The Importance of Attribution As a social marketer, you need to understand and measure the impact your efforts are having on web and conversion metrics.

9 The Importance of Attribution As a social marketer, you need to understand and measure the impact your efforts are having on web and conversion metrics. You are driving site visits makes executives happy!, signups, and sales. This Without attribution, you can t prove that you are actually doing this and all of the credit goes to direct. Illustrate your true business impact by implementing tracking and attribution tools Media Strategies Stategies Summit

10 Sounds Like A Lot of Work. Do I Really Need To? of Social Sharing is DARK Social Media Strategies Summit

11 Sounds Like A Lot of Work. Do I Really Need To? of Your Social Traffic is DARK Media Meda Strategies Summit

12 Sounds Like A Lot of Work. Do I Really Need To? of Your Social Sales Are DARK Social Media Strategies Summit

A Case Study: A Leading Beauty Retailer 78% of social purchases were unattributed for leading beauty retailer Challenge: Results: The customer was experiencing a typical problem in social marketing.

With existing analytics solutions they were unable to prove their effectiveness and as a result, appeared to be underperforming.

13 A Case Study: A Leading Beauty Retailer 78% of social purchases were unattributed for leading beauty retailer Challenge: Results: The customer was experiencing a typical problem in social marketing. They were convinced that a significant percentage of purchases they were driving through social media marketing were unaccounted for. With existing analytics solutions they were unable to prove their effectiveness and as a result, appeared to be underperforming. With significant investment made in the social team, they needed to prove their efficacy. Previously Unattributed 22% 78% Discovered that 78% of purchases were unattributed, when in fact they were driven by earned social sharing (which had previously been untracked). Enabled the addition of hundreds of influencers that were previously unknown into existing social and content marketing plans. Identified the right content to drive purchases and the utilized this to improve future social marketing campaigns. Attributed by Simply Measured Social Media Strategies Summit

15 User Agent Analysis Facebook, Twitter and other mobile apps leave breadcrumbs to help you identify them as traffic source when a referrer isn t passed. This is most commonly done using a user agent string. Huh? A user agent string is a piece of meta data captured by weblogs that details the visitor s device and browser. Social channels embed network-specific IDs in the User agents to make them trackable This is helpful, but really hard to use in practice! Social Media Strategies Summit

16 How to Measure Dark Traffic From Your Brand Posts Link shortening is a good start But it leads to disconnected and incomplete data Clicks do not equal visits Per-post attribution is Challenging Social Media Strategies Summit

17 Real Attribution For Dark Social Appending UTM Parameters to the links in your social posts allows you to measure their impact even when traffic appears direct! Social Media Strategies Summit

18 What About Social Shares From My Audience? UTM parameters are still your friend! Add a brand mention for extra love. Media Strategies Summit

19 But Visitors Don t Behave The Way We Want Them To! Visitors don t really use share buttons 55-70% of sharing is URL copy and paste - Especially true for dark social channels Mobile OS sharing pulls URLs directly from the browser Media Strategies Summit

20 Behold The URL Hash Fragment Allows you to track social sharing AND attribute dark social traffic conversions and shares Leverages your audience s organic behaviors Zero impact on SEO Media Strategies Summit Social Media Strategies Summit

21 We Can Help (Shameless Plug Alert!!) Simply Measured s attribution solution provides complete measurement of dark social Track all of you earned social sharing using hash fragments Automatically attribute owned posts without having to append UTM parameters Conversion tracking to quantify the tangible business value driven by dark sharing and brand posting Media Strategies Summit

Predictions For The Future Explosion of mobile messaging will continue (growing faster than social channels) + Ads and commerce come to messaging apps (check out FB s announcements at f8) + Privacy

22 Predictions For The Future Explosion of mobile messaging will continue (growing faster than social channels) + Ads and commerce come to messaging apps (check out FB s announcements at f8) + Privacy concerns will drive more private sharing (End-to-end encryption in WhatsApp) + Continued Emergence of dark channels (rise of Snapchat) = Ever-increasing importance of dark social!!! Media Strategies Summit

Now What? Teach your colleagues about dark social and evangelize its importance in your organization. Start measuring and reporting on dark social.

23 Now What? Teach your colleagues about dark social and evangelize its importance in your organization. Start measuring and reporting on dark social. Illustrate your social s team s larger impact by shining a light on dark social and properly attributing traffic, engagement, and conversions to social! Talk to me or anyone else from Simply Measured if you want help solving these problems. Media Strategies Summit

24 QUESTIONS? Kevin Shively Head of Marketing Communication Simply

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